Many applications on a mobile User Equipment, UE, such as mobile phones, smart phones, tablet computers and the like collect data and store these data in designated file directories on the UE or on a non-volatile memory device such as a Secure Digital, SD, card, for example. With the increased use of multimedia applications on a UE, like picture, sound, video, text, presentations, mail and other messaging data processing, besides speech communication, data storage capacity on the UE becomes critical. This, despite that the data storage capacity of UEs is continuously increasing with each new model or device type. Hence, data storage is often a limiting factor in the day to day use of a UE.
Prior art data storage may involve, for example, on-line backup: the end-user may backup his UE based data items in a data storage provided by a data storage provider, like off-line backup of data at a storage device connected to a Personal Computer, PC, or the like—generally entails that the data is replicated between UE and the data storage. Although this is a secure method for data safety, it still means that the data is kept in the UE, or on the SD card, for example, with a copy in the backup data storage. Hence, the data storage requirement on the UE is not reduced.
Another known data storage includes ‘share’ towards a network application: data items kept on the UE can be ‘shared’ with a network application provided by a third party, such as a third party running a social media application or the like. Again, the data item, e.g. a picture, is safely stored in a data storage controlled by the particular network application, this neither relaxes the data storage requirement on the UE.
To partially remedy the dilemma of the above-listed network based alternatives, the end-user may delete a data item from the UE, after that data item has been transferred to a network location, as described above. This has the disadvantage, however, that the user has the data no longer locally available. Although this is deemed acceptable for certain applications, such as pictures, it may form a dilemma for certain use cases, such as documents, which are to be processed or otherwise used on the UE and which must be readily available.
It is further observed that when data items are ‘shared’ towards some form of network based storage, these data items will be available, once stored in the network data storage, through selected applications only. For example, when using a dedicated picture storage application, the data items, i.e. pictures, can be subsequently retrieved only through this dedicated application. This represents, in a way, a general shortcoming of the available ‘sharing’ solutions, namely that they are restricted to specific applications.
So-called cloud storage systems allow for storing data of arbitrary kind in cloud based storage systems. Cloud storage systems operate, by design and intentionally, independent from the mobile telecommunications network to allow users from an arbitrary device, including a desktop personal computer, for example, access to the data storage via the public Internet, for example.
To free space at the local storage in the UE or at an associated SD card, the user has to delete the local copy of the data items that are stored in the cloud. Again, deleting the local copy has the disadvantage that the available user data is no longer visible on the UE.
In practice, when using a backup or cloud storage solution as described above, i.e. a network based storage, the user is each time facing the problem which data items are to be kept at the UE to remain directly ‘visible’ from the file directory of the local storage at the UE, and which data items may be moved to and are consequently only visible, i.e. indirectly ‘visible’, from the cloud storage file directory.
Although users generally may store and consequently retrieve or collect all their data items with the cloud storage, such that the file directory of the cloud storage contains all available data items, new or fresh data items produced during a communication session or other use of the UE are locally stored with the UE. Accordingly, as long as these new data items are not stored in the cloud, the user still faces the problem of not having a real time, comprehensive overview of the available data items.
Besides the lack of a clear and comprehensive overview of all the momentarily available data items, i.e. either UE based and/or network based, in particular during an ongoing storage of data, the UE may run out of available storage space. This poses a severe limitation and problem on the use of the UE for streaming data producing applications, such as video recordings by the UE.